"Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans." – John Lennon, Beautiful Boy

Summer High Five

Summer is my FAVORITE y’all. Love the sun. Love the heat. Love the break from school. Love pretending to be a SAHM again even just for two months 😉

Olaf and I are on the same page about summer.

“Prob’ly getting gorgeously tanned in summer…”

With sunscreen of course.

Towards the end of the school year, when people would ask me what I was going to do during summer vacation, my answer was “as little as possible!”

But actually our days booked up quickly with camping trips and swim lessons and visits to see family and friends. James is still working, so most of our plans are weekend plans.

Back around New Year’s I had said that my goal was to write a blog post weekly.

Yeah, no that didn’t happen.

But I have a new idea for quick posts that I’m hoping will make it easier for me to jump on here and type up something to share. I’m calling it High Five posts. I got idea from other bloggers who do posts on Friday sharing 5 (or however many) things from their week. I do not promise to do this on any certain day, nor do I promise to do this weekly! But I will try to do it more often than once a month, which so far is my pattern this year.

So here’s my Beginning of Summer High Five Post: Five things that have happened so far this summer.

Father’s Day Camping Trip

Didn’t take any pics during this camping trip because I guess we were too busy having fun 😉 It rained on us, but James had strung a tarp over our picnic table so it was actually kind of fun to hang out under there and watch the rain. Our campsite was right on the water and we brought floats for relaxing on the lake. Met some friendly camping neighbors. It was great.

2. Museum of Life and Science

Since I am spending my weekdays living the SAHM life again, I took the boys to the our local kids science museum last week. This play area used to be so stressful for me because Henry would put EVERYTHING in his mouth and I would be feeling worried about what the other parents were thinking about his behavior. But now his mouthing tendencies are less and he is able to explore more and enjoy playing with the toys. In this part of the play area Henry had fun pulling apart the velcro slices of fruit and veggies and then banging them together to hear the wood clack. Meanwhile, Calvin was playing with the stuffed animals, putting them safely in their cages and putting together a little bowl of play food for each animal. After playing in the indoor play space, we went out to the playground and we went for a walk to see bears and wolves. This trip to the museum was really a success. Both boys did really well.

3. Friday Night Meatballs

Friday Night Meatballs is a way to get friends and neighbors together for a low key, low stress, kid-friendly dinner. Read more about the concept here. A family in our community hosts one every month. They happen to also go to the same UU fellowship that we go to, so when we went to our first Friday Night Meatballs at their house last week, though we were meeting the hosts for the first time, there was one other mom we knew from the ERUUF parents group. It was such a nice way to meet some other families with kids around the same age as Calvin and Henry. The family that hosted made spaghetti and the other families brought sides, drinks, etc. I made my very first cobbler to share for dessert and it really was as easy as everyone said it would be. It turned out so yummy! I used the Blackberry Cobbler #1 recipe from the Pioneer Woman.

4. Day trip to Kure Beach

One of the things I love about where we live is that we are just a 2-3 hour drive from the beach. It’s not close enough to go all the time, but it is close enough for a day trip once in a while. We packed up the car Friday night and left early Saturday morning. We spent the morning on the beach, then headed to the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher.

We ate dinner at a restaurant in Carolina Beach and then we headed home! Great way to spend a Saturday.

5. Yoga Shred and Body Boss

If you follow me on Instagram you may have noticed me stepping up my fitness game. Starting around my birthday I did the Yoga Shred course from DailyOM.com which I finished up this past weekend. Today I started a new fitness program called the Body Boss Method. It’s a HIIT program that is accessible online and via a book that you can order. There’s a 12 week program with a 4 week pre-training program for beginners. I decided to go ahead and do the pre-training program to ease into it, and I plan to integrate my yoga practice through warm-ups and cool downs and on off days, since the Body Boss method is 3 days/week. I’m excited to be starting something new and I’ll let you know how it goes!

Thanks for stopping by! What are some fun things you’ve been doing this summer?